Sarah Silverman and co. bitch about budget cuts. They're threatening to quit. Seeing as the show's about as funny as testicular cancer, if I had the energy I'd start a petition 'supporting' them. It probably doesn't help that the much funnier Important Things' production costs are a dollar fitty and a nbox of envelopes. (Thanks Eezel) -hendred
We estimated over 163 000 fire-related deaths in 2001 in India, which is about 2% of all deaths. This number was six times that reported by police. About 106 000 of these deaths occurred in women, mostly between 15 and 34 years of age. This age—sex pattern was consistent across multiple local studies, and the average ratio of fire-related deaths of young women to young men was 3:1.
The inference is that many of the deaths are from self-immolation and domestic abuse. I'm not sure how they control for men (I assume) being out of the house more, but it's in the Lancet, which I think is pretty well respected. Anyway, if anybody's got any thoughts, I'm all ears. -hendred
A game of skill, easy to do, done around the world Mon Mar 2 2009
Bat Fight A musical adventure with Will Ferrel (still rocking the Ric Flair look from East Bound and Down), with special guest Craig Robinson. From derek.
It could pay off the combined national debts of China, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, according to 2008 estimates by the CIA Factbook, and still have plenty left over for a good night out.
The State of OK has chosen The Flaming Lips song Do You Realize as its state song. In other music news, if you're into redheaded singers, Neko Case(NSFW) just put out her latest, Middle Cyclone, which in the very least has the cover of the year. If you're biding your time until the inevitable helicopters sell out, it might be worth checking out. -jm
Michael Lewis continues his fantastic financial reporting with a long article on the disaster that is Iceland. A couple of nuggets
Iceland instantly became the only nation on earth that Americans could point to and say, “Well, at least we didn’t do that.” In the end, Icelanders amassed debts amounting to 850 percent of their G.D.P. (The debt-drowned United States has reached just 350 percent.)
Icelanders—or at any rate Icelandic men—had their own explanations for why, when they leapt into global finance, they broke world records: the natural superiority of Icelanders. Because they were small and isolated it had taken 1,100 years for them—and the world—to understand and exploit their natural gifts, but now that the world was flat and money flowed freely, unfair disadvantages had vanished.
Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called “hidden people”—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.” -jm
The bottom line is there isn’t anything in this study that would change the decisions we made for the Chevy Volt. We think a plug-in offering 40 miles of gas- and emissions-free driving like the Volt is the sweet spot for the majority of customers because nearly 80 percent of drivers can drive their daily commute and return home for an overnight recharge that avoids inconvenience for them and additional daytime load on the electric grid.
The two surviving members of the band, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr -- as well as John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the widow of George Harrison -- have all been involved in conceiving the music game project.
Video of an idiot defending his 1999 book that claiming the Dow was heading to 36,000 within 3-5 years by saying that it will get there some day. He goes so far as to say the basic ideas of the book are "accurate." -decker
If you all didn't see this in your inbox, here's the link.
Highlights:
Auction for seats in the lead truck for every heat (each heat being purchaseable) My radio debut Buggy Reception times/places Buggy book master file Total geekery
Wikipedia erases any negative entries regarding Obama (Ayers association, for example).
The Wikipedia entry about former President George W. Bush, by contrast, is highly critical. One typical entry reads, "Prior to his marriage, Bush had multiple accounts of alcohol abuse. ...
I think as long as Wikipedia presents facts as facts and opinions as opinions (under headings such as "Criticisms"), it's OK. Plus, it's mostly edited by the general public (it even states that the administrators are just volunteers who are trusted by the community), so any consistent bias would likely reflect the users at large, in my opinion. It's kind of like saying the whole country has a liberal bias. I heart Google and Wikipedia, personally. -decked
Obviously I helped bring this about.Mon Mar 9 2009
The Northeast is a bastion of Godless heathens. Maybe it's correlated with ski terrain. Even Utah's rocking 14% godlessness. -hendred, who's looking forward to ME cracking the 1/3 barrier shortly
The original script conference for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Lucas, Spielberg and Laurence Kasdan talking for 5 days about Indiana Jones (Smith). I haven't read the PDF but the snippets on the linked page are great. Some are serious and insightful. Others are unintentionally hilarious. I also have no idea about the veracity (authenticity?) of all this, but it seems like way too much work to just make up. -hendred
S - What if it's an animal we hate, an animal the audience can't stand. It's always after our hero and doesn't like him very much, like a mongoose.
Jon Stewart took it to Jim Cramer last night. I've long told everyone in Houston who has told me they watch Cramer to stop (and to stop watching CNBC for that matter), so I was happy to see someone make fun of him and the network so publicly, even if not all of Jon's accusations are well-placed. One thing that was left unexplained (or maybe I missed it) is where the grainy clip of Cramer giving shady advice about how to manipulate markets came from. At times, it feels as if JS is channeling hendrix. -decker
Nickell comes to us with some commentary from the right side of aisle:
Obama's poll numbers are obviously dropping, as they should. You could have inserted any of the most liberal politicans from Washington into the presidency and it would be no different. He is, quite simply, a liberal machine with only 3 buttons: "tax" "spend" and "keep blaming Bush".
His campaign was flawless and he wasted Hillary with his talk about "not being a Washington insider". Now he's become a cliche'.
I can't wait for Porkulus package #8 and #9 . . . but what comes after Trillion? Zillions?
It's still much better than the previous president, and just by the very nature of of the country being split nearly in half by party, this isn't too surprising to me, but there you go. I'm just happy to have a president whose grammar doesn't make me cringe, even if his logic often does. -decked
I installed one of these cables between my gigabit ethernet switch and my Canon Pixma 6700 color printer. I know it's not a sanctioned use, but I was looking for the ultimate in speed and color fidelity. I'm freaky that way.
The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.
Since then, I can't find the cat, and my entire set of VAX/VMS 4.7 documentation (DEC Will Rise Again!) (Mmmmm, orangey!) has gone missing.
Favorable/Unfavorable on notable people. It includes Stewart, Colbert, O'Reilly and Limbaugh. I just wanna know who the 8% are with a favorable opinion of Bernie Madoff.
The poll was commissioned by and posted to Daily Kos, bastion of communists, socialists, father-rapers, litter bugs, etc. -hendred
Everyone is invited and I strongly encourage everyone heading to Chicago to participate since we will undoubtedly be watching many March Madness games this weekend.
For those of you who want in on winnings, I'm saying $15 per bracket... Winner gets 70%, 2nd gets 20%, 3rd gets 10%. I'll post my address and Paypal on the bracket site once I get home tonight. -JTed
I'm sick and tired of these Mother F****ng GUNS on this mother F*****ng Plane Tue Mar 17 2009
From ab:This article is horribly slanted, but looking for more articles on it proved fruitless.
By the way, the pilot could kill all those passengers way faster without the gun. I don't know what the downside is to keeping the program as is.
The FAA site and the Wikipedia article about the program haven't been updated to indicate the program's going away. There seems to be some insight in the comments, but they're internet comments, so get out your Morton's. Although it's a Washington Times editorial, so you probably had it out already. -hendred
This year's glorious March Madness set up: 2 HDTVs with the DirecTV March Madness package, free Comcast coming through the wall showing on the PIP, and one game streaming to a laptop hooked up to a larger monitor. On the other hand, I started out the day 1 of 3 on picks, so it's not all great... -decker
Update: Made a slight change of placement of the 2nd TV for increased awesomeness.
Podcast interview with Nassim Taleb, the Black Swan author. Pretty interesting throughout for those of you interested in probability and its application to finance, science and medicine, and even religion. On the last point (discussed in the last 8 minutes), he offers some ideas of how religion has been beneficial as a shelter from the hubris of man and his overconfidence in his knowledge. Serves as a different perspective to recent comments I made on religion.
Also, I recently saw this critique of Taleb by another author, Richard Bookstaber, who claims that Taleb is arguing with a strawman when he criticizes financial risk managers' use of models.
From will: CNN felt that Lance in my pants breaking his collarbone warranted front page breaking news status. Better hurry up and read it before the ireporters get to it.
And here's my impression of the soon to come ireport:
I was on my way to Asturias to learn bable and drink cider when I saw on twitter that Lance was going to be near by. I'm a huge opponent of cancer, so I decided to stop by and watch a leg of "el ciclismo". I wasn't near the crash, but I talked to a guy who was there and he said a bunch of riders fell. I have a picture of the guy I talked to on my cell phone...
I was poking around CMUBuggy.org today and found some fairly informative roll reports for anyone that is interested.
Interesting excerpt - Sunday unfortunately featured one of the scariest moments in recent memory when an SUV got onto the course after crossing the bridge at the chute and blowing right by the barricades and heading up towards the flags. In the end, enough flaggers jumped bravely out in front of the car to get it to stop and pull next to the monument. Sigma Nu was able to stop one buggy at the top of the hill and one near transition, but the first buggy had rolled past the car, luckily without incident. Many have suggested returning to a barricade format that funnels cars into the Phipps access road so that we don’t have to rely on the folks manning the barricade (Beta this semester). I’m sure sweepstakes is giving it their full attention.
Who is the genious that put Beta in charge of stopping cars from coming onto the course during rolls?
Guns and ammunition are one growth industry in this recession, fuelled by anecdotal evidence that the economic downturn has sparked an increase in crime from which Americans want to protect themselves.
The Texas Senate criminal justice committee is debating whether to permit state residents to come to work with guns in their vehicles. Proponents say as crime rises, Texans must have guns to drive safely to and from work. Critics object that, given the increasing number of Texans losing their jobs, guns in their cars is a recipe for disaster.
In November last year there were a record 1,529,635 background checks for gun licences in the US, up 42 per cent from the same period a year earlier, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In January 2009 the number of background checks requested was 1.21m, up from 942,556 in the same month last year, and rose in February to 1.3m, up from 1m in February 2008.
Congratulations to the founding fathers for being so clear about the right to bear arms during an era of muskets, slow loading rifles, and inacurrate pistols. -decker
UPDATE: there is now a link. I think I had written some intro with it before and scrapped it before posting.
Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when an American B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He returned to Nagasaki, his hometown, before the second attack, officials said.
I'm out of work, and have been for like a month and a half. I was having beers with Spencer last night, and he encouraged me to try the PKA connections. The CMU pikes "power board" appears to be very dead...and I can't find anything of a "national" alumni type board yet.
Boot is helping, but tech is very cautious right now, and I'm way too specialized to fit cleanly into some job requirements (not that I couldn't do just about anything tech-related).
Virginia Postrel will not be featured in Michael Moore's next movie...Thu Mar 26 2009
I read a piece in The Atlantic that was pro-American health care, from the author's personal cancer experience. There are some good points, namely that the alternative to a private system is rationing by the government who will have to subjectively determine which drugs are cost-effective (with an emphasis on cost) on your behalf and that other countries free ride (to some extent) medical innovations that come as a result of the incentives found in America's system. Add those together, and a more socialized US system would likely mean rationing a "smaller pie" of health care goods and services to bring down costs. Having said all that, I think the author's a little too complacent about the current US system which could benefit from certain types of reform that would discourage overtreatment and add some price elasticity to drugs and services, as I've argued several times before.
I had a nitpick with one of her sentences:
A more centralized U.S. health-care system might reap some one-time administrative savings...
The administrative savings would be ongoing, not one-time. Anyway, if you're interested in this kind of stuff, it's a pretty quick read. -decker
More New Math.com Math+Grammar=Hodge-podge of jokes. Some are stupid, some are pretty clever, and I think one was blatantly ripped off of the Simpsons. -hendred
In honor of F1's start this weekend, an explanation of the KERS system. It's trapping braking energy and making it available for a 'boost' each lap. Sorta like an upgraded Prius. -hendred the conflicted
AIG guy's resignation letter.. He defends his bonus, takes the CEO to task, and promises to give away whatever's left of the bonus. The Comments are almost at 1,000 at the moment. -hendred
Person Ratings.com You can rate people. On what kind of person they are. I'm assuming this is for real, but I'm just digging it for the comedy. -hendred
PiKA builds Chimera the 2nd. Why wouldn’t you want two of the buggy that you set the course record with? Incremental change is almost too generous of a characterization for a buggy that (when painted) will be indistinguishable from last year’s model to almost everyone. If you want to split hairs, it looks like the new buggy’s fairings are larger than Chimera’s, coming up right to (or even over) the windshield line.
When you hear 'Bean' and 'IT' in the same breath, your grain of salt should grow to planetary-size, but I got this from my Information Systems professor, so it should be on decent authority. Also, the article linked seems to be very non-fake.
On April 1, the "Conficker" computer worm is going to do - well, nobody knows what it will do, but it is set to do something that day. It could be a joke, or it could be a major attack on the internet. If history is a guide, it probably won't be major, but the potential is there for significant harm. Millions of computers worldwide have been infected with this program.
I subscribe to the "Windows Secrets" newsletter; the people who produce it do not rush out and panic at every rumor, but they think it would be a good idea for Windows users to know if they are infected (and if so remove it) before the April 1 date.
Houses that have... uh... more than two television sets... and...other things of that nature. Tue Mar 31 2009
Let's play the "what's on your dvr" game again:
- PTI - The Soup - 24 - The Office - 30 Rock - My Name is Earl - Trust Me - Sarah Conner Chronicles - SNL - Planet Earth - Intervention - Las Vegas - Access Hollywood (I have the worst roommate in the world)
From bw: Tesla Model-S...kinda Maserati Quattroporteish. Can they add exterior speakers to make enginer noises...or at least a PA setup so I can make my own?
